Library › Prudentius › Crowns of Martyrdom

Crowns of Martyrdom

Prudentius, tr. Thackeray, 1890; selections

Chapter 12

SAY, friend, what means this stir to-day? What summons gathers all¹
These happy troops along the streets of Rome?
The feast ennobled by the blood of Peter and of Paul
Calls forth the worshippers to leave their home.

The self-same day with interval of one revolving year
Beheld the pair by death triumphant crowned.
Full well doth Father Tiber know, gliding those marshes near,
Hallowed with trophies twain that turfy ground.

Both Cross and Sword he witnessed, twice the ghastly shower saw fall,
The self-same herb bedewed with martyr’s blood.
A victim first fell Peter, in Nero’s judgment-hall
Condemned to hang upon the towering wood.

But he, in fear to emulate his Master, cannot brook
To court the doom that our salvation earned:
And he claimeth from his murderer one boon, that he may look
On the Tree’s nether limb with head down-turned.²

So then his hands transfixed below, the top his feet upbore:
Greater in spirit as more vile in guise,
Remembering “Who abaseth self exalted shall he soar,”
To give his soul to heaven, he bowed his eyes.

Soon as the circling seasons brought the swift recurring date,
And Orient Sun reushered in the day,
The tyrant spat on holy Paul the venom of his hate,
Christ’s world-worn Teacher resolute to slay.

He had seen the goal—had written “I am ready to depart
And be with Christ,” with heaven-inspired pen.
The headsman does his office.³ Beats no more that noble heart;
Nor day nor hour had failed his prescient ken.

On either bank, nigh each to each, their ashes now repose,
Where winds the stream between two hallowed graves;
The gilded shrine that on the right doth Peter’s bones enclose⁴
’Neath sough of olives sacred Tiber laves.

Trickling adown the slope from brow of overhanging hill,
There oozes a perennial source of oil.
That fountain flows through fabric now of costly marble, till
In gleaming bath its circling eddies boil.⁵

Below with hollow undertone the rushing streams descend
From sparkling basin, white as drifted snow;
Art’s many-coloured hues above with amber wavelets blend
Resplendent moss and gold’s green-tinted glow.

Lo! where with mantling purple overshadowed lies the pool,
The fretted roof reflected seems to swim.
Christ the true Shepherd there portrayed, to waters clear and cool,
Is leading on His flock that thirst for Him.

By Tiber’s current, where the turf on the left bank is grazed,
And Ostia’s road guardeth the hallowed ground,⁶
Our prince’s favour there to Paul a stately fane upraised,
And pranked with golden plates the circuit round.⁷⁸

With branching foil of metal blaze on high the burnished beams,
The aisles are ruddy as the morning ray;
Of pillars white ’neath gilded vault a fourfold order gleams,
And arches dyed as green as leas in May.⁹

The Father gave these pledges to the nation of the gown:
To be revered for aye twin temples spring;
Two roads lead forth Rome’s worshippers, two feasts one light doth crown,
To each we hasten, and at each we sing.

Where Tiber’s spanned by Hadrian’s bridge,¹⁰ we reach the stream’s left side:
From vigil and from ritual the priest
Thither hies back to offerings fresh. Thus Rome keeps holy tide:
Now homeward wend and celebrate each feast.

Notes

In this poem there is less of detail in the minutiae of the actual martyrdom than is usual with Prudentius. He seems to wish to dwell rather on the triumphant than on the militant Church, and writes with all the enthusiasm of a pilgrim fresh from the holy places at Rome. In common with St. Augustine, Sermon 28, “anni vertentis occursu,” and Arator, “annique voluto tempore,” he differs from the accounts that placed the two martyrdoms of the two great Apostles on the same day, by making the interval of a year elapse between them. Besides St. Augustine, St. Leo the Great preached on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul. In his eighty-third sermon their conjoint authority is put forth as the double title to obedience on which he builds his claim to power. And for this festival, in which the two Apostles were associated, St. Paulinus used yearly to repair from Nola to Rome.
In St. Jerome’s Lectionary there are two Gospels and two Epistles on St. Peter’s festival, June 29th, the one pair under the name of St. Peter, the other under that of St. Paul. Ruinart traces back this day—one of the oldest of Christian festivals—to the year A.D. 258, and it has been thought to be of even more primitive antiquity. One of the changes proposed by Bishop Cosin at the last revision of our English Prayer Book, but not adopted, was the restoration of the title “St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Day.”
The metre is that technically known as the Fourth Archilochian, and the poem is translated into the same measure as that which Conington invented in which to render “Solvitur acris hiems,” Horace’s only ode in this metre, a combination of the fourteen-syllable with the ten-syllable iambic in an alternately rhyming stanza.
P. 152. pedibus—supinis. Our earliest authority for this is Origen (ob. circa 254), who, as quoted by Eusebius, H. E. iii. 1, states that St. Peter was crucified with his head downwards, at his own request: Ὃς καὶ ἐπὶ τέλει ἐν Ῥώμῃ γενόμενος ἀνεσκολοπίσθη κατὰ κεφαλῆς οὕτως αὐτὸς ἀξιώσας παθεῖν (Expos. in Genesim). Before him Tertullian had attested his crucifixion at Rome: “Tunc Petrus ab altero cingitur, cum cruci astringitur” (Scorpiaces, c. 15). “Romam . . . . ubi Petrus passioni Dominicae adaequatur” (De praescr. haeret, c. 36).
Seneca mentions cases of persons being crucified with their heads turned earthwards. “Video cruces non unius quidem generis, sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas: capite quidam conversos in terram suspendere.” (Ad Marciam, De Cons., xx.)
inmolatur ense. No one who has made any stay at Rome will have failed to visit the legendary, and possibly the real, scene of St. Paul’s martyrdom, the Church alle tre Fontane, about three miles from the city, not far from the road to Ostia.
P. 154. Dextra, &c. Dressel believes that what is here described is the baptistery of the old Vatican basilica.
colymbus, a bath (κόλυμβος). A rare word, used by Lampridius (fl. 293), who is held by some to be the same as Spartian. The representation of the Shepherd was probably one in mosaic of Christ, the Good Shepherd, rather than of St. Peter.
P. 156. titulum. Here used in the later sense of a monument or church erected over a martyr’s grave. What follows refers to the church that Prudentius saw standing on the site of what is now the grand San Paolo-fuori-le-mura. The first church built there was Constantine’s. This original oratory was enlarged into a basilica by Valentinian II. and Theodosius (the princeps bonus of this passage), A.D. 386. “Theodosius coepit perfecit Onorius aulam” is the inscription on the arch that separates the nave from the transept.
Lusitque, &c. This reading seems to be better than clusit or clausit. Virgil, Georgic, ii. 464, uses the compound verb in this sense of fancifully wrought, daintily adorned: “Inlusas auro vestes.” So in the “Passio Agnetis,” v. 105, “Inlusa pictae vestis inania.” Prudentius uses ludo also in “Peristeph.,” xi. 130—
“Luserat et minio russeolam saniem.”
talenta are probably plates of gold. The word is similarly used in the poem on St. Hippolytus, l. 188, “Addidit ornando clara talenta operi,” and the whole of the description in the five preceding lines seems plainly there to refer to the inside of the building. The Romans made the outside of their basilicas studiedly plain, and lavished ornament on the inside, particularly on the apse. Round the apse, if not round the whole of the inside of this ancient Church of St. Paul, these plates of metal were fixed, as is believed to have been the case in the Basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore, founded A.D. 352, which Prudentius may have seen, and in that of San Pietro-in-Vincoli,¹ which belongs to a rather later date.
¹ See “L’Architecture Romane,” par Édouard Corroyer, Paris, 1887. At p. 68 is a print of the inside of this church, representing the apse thus ornamented with plates.
camuros. Dressel in his note on this passage infers, from what few remains there are of the church that was burnt in 1823, that paintings and mosaics were here intended, such as decorated almost all the basilicas. Mrs. Jameson, who saw the old church before it was burnt, speaks of representations of the life of St. Paul executed by the Greek mosaic masters of the eleventh century, but mentions nothing of an earlier date.
P. 158. pontis Hadriani. The Ponte di Sant’ Angelo, built originally as an approach to the Mausoleum of Hadrian.
It was a very early custom for the Bishops of Rome to celebrate the Holy Communion in both St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Churches on their joint Festival.